The theme for the 2024 Best of Central Oregon was "Titans," in honor of the Summer Olympic Games. This year, the Source Weekly welcomed art intern Connley Sewalls for the season, who is studying illustration at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Sewalls crafted a magical world of mythically powerful women, stoic strongmen, a lady on a Pegagus wearing cowboy boots... and even managed to draw the members of our editorial team for the Staff Picks section.
We chatted with Sewalls about her creations. Below is an excerpt from the conversation, lightly edited for clarity.
Source Weekly: Tell me a little bit about your background in art. How'd you get started? What was your inspiration for wanting to study art?
Connley Sewalls: I grew up very interested in art. My mom used to say that I left like a trail of glitter and paper scraps everywhere I went. I really had no plan B. I only applied to this school that I go to, the Savannah College of Art and Design, and it's always been my plan. I didn't know what kind of art, but I kind of fell into illustration, and I'm really happy with it. I've loved drawing my whole life. So it feels like it just makes sense.
SW: I know your college, SCAD, has a great reputation, and that you're about to start your senior year. What's it like studying illustration there?
CS: I'm an illustration major, and we all choose a concentration. There's concept design for video games, and there's service design. Mine is publication and editorial
Jennifer Galler
Sewalls at work on our "head in the hole" board for the Best of Central Oregon party.
Source Weekly: Tell me a little bit about your background in art. How'd you get started? What was your inspiration for wanting to study art?
Connley Sewalls: I grew up very interested in art. My mom used to say that I left like a trail of glitter and paper scraps everywhere I went. I really had no plan B. I only applied to this school that I go to, the Savannah College of Art and Design, and it's always been my plan. I didn't know what kind of art, but I kind of fell into illustration, and I'm really happy with it. I've loved drawing my whole life. So it feels like it just makes sense.
SW: I know your college, SCAD, has a great reputation, and that you're about to start your senior year. What's it like studying illustration there?
CS: I'm an illustration major, and we all choose a concentration. There's concept design for video games, and there's service design. Mine is publication and editorial
Connley Sewalls
Initial concept drawings of the characters from the 2024 Best of Central Oregon, featuring a "Titans/Olympics" theme.
illustration, along with animated illustration — dynamic publication is what it's called. We take classes that are generally required for all of us, like anatomy and perspective, and materials and techniques, and then we zone in and focus on our specialized things. So this fall, I'm taking editorial illustration and another animated illustration class, and really, we just try to simulate the client experience in our projects, and we write briefs and try to make slideshows that that show the whole process of what we do — mood boards, what the client expects, the target demographic, and then the whole process from from sketch to finish piece.
SW: Talk about your process for creating the illustrations found in the 2024 Best of Central Oregon issue.
CS: It starts with the client — in this case, you all — telling me what you want. The theme for the Best of Central Oregon this year is titans of industry, or centered around the Olympics. So my supervisor and I interpret that as this ancient Greek thing with with a lot of statues and, you know, Greek shape language.
And we talked about, what does this look like? How do we want to convey that? So we decided we wanted it to be playful. We wanted to have kind of a fun, rustic color palette and kind of be like a modernized version of Greek antiquity. So, so after the concepting stage, we talk about it, I prepare sketches, and then I present them to Jen [Galler, art director], my supervisor, and she presents them to Aaron [Switzer], the publisher. And once everything's approved, then we step forward to line work and kind of refining it and making it cleaned up. And then after line work, we color it with a color palette. We selected a limited color palette that we use throughout the whole issue. All the illustrations follow this set of colors that we made that we think kind of communicates the rustic, ancient Greece feeling. We're inspired by Greek black figure pottery. They used a lot of oranges. And then from there, I textured it.
SW: What was your interest in interning at the Source Weekly?
CS: I'm super interested in my art accompanying journalism. I think that that's something that I feel emotionally connected to. My mom's a librarian, and I grew up reading a lot, and, you know, we would watch the news every morning. And I think I just think having my art accompany something that feels like it's making an impact is really important to me. And and saying something that's relevant to social and cultural happenings.
SW: Talk about your process for creating the illustrations found in the 2024 Best of Central Oregon issue.
CS: It starts with the client — in this case, you all — telling me what you want. The theme for the Best of Central Oregon this year is titans of industry, or centered around the Olympics. So my supervisor and I interpret that as this ancient Greek thing with with a lot of statues and, you know, Greek shape language.
And we talked about, what does this look like? How do we want to convey that? So we decided we wanted it to be playful. We wanted to have kind of a fun, rustic color palette and kind of be like a modernized version of Greek antiquity. So, so after the concepting stage, we talk about it, I prepare sketches, and then I present them to Jen [Galler, art director], my supervisor, and she presents them to Aaron [Switzer], the publisher. And once everything's approved, then we step forward to line work and kind of refining it and making it cleaned up. And then after line work, we color it with a color palette. We selected a limited color palette that we use throughout the whole issue. All the illustrations follow this set of colors that we made that we think kind of communicates the rustic, ancient Greece feeling. We're inspired by Greek black figure pottery. They used a lot of oranges. And then from there, I textured it.
...We looked at a lot of vintage action movie posters which had this grandiosity to them that was lovely, and the figures are breaking the frame, and they're kind of dramatic, and they're a little ridiculous, almost. And so we were definitely going for that.
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SW: What was your inspiration for what the figures looked like, or how they should look?
CS: So, of course I kind of wanted the illustrations to to match my portfolio, in my art direction, and I definitely leaned towards a more like playful, line-heavy style. But we looked at a lot of vintage action movie posters which had this grandiosity to them that was lovely, and the figures are breaking the frame, and they're kind of dramatic, and they're a little ridiculous, almost. And so we were definitely going for that.
SW: What was your favorite illustration or character of the set you did for Best of Central Oregon?
CS: I really loved the one I did for Best of Sisters, the Pegasus lady. She's riding on Pegasus and feeding Pegasus grapes. I think I just loved the way I drew her hair and the horse feathers. I love repetition in my drawings, and I think that one looked nice, visually.
CS: So, of course I kind of wanted the illustrations to to match my portfolio, in my art direction, and I definitely leaned towards a more like playful, line-heavy style. But we looked at a lot of vintage action movie posters which had this grandiosity to them that was lovely, and the figures are breaking the frame, and they're kind of dramatic, and they're a little ridiculous, almost. And so we were definitely going for that.
SW: What was your favorite illustration or character of the set you did for Best of Central Oregon?
CS: I really loved the one I did for Best of Sisters, the Pegasus lady. She's riding on Pegasus and feeding Pegasus grapes. I think I just loved the way I drew her hair and the horse feathers. I love repetition in my drawings, and I think that one looked nice, visually.
SW: You grew up partly in Bend. Where did you go to school here?
CS: I went to Summit [High School] my freshman, sophomore years of high school, but my parents have moved around a lot, and so we moved away. I finished school in Kentucky where I grew up.
SW: And then how are you back here in Bend right now?
CS: My parents moved back. They missed Bend, they said it's the only move they made, not for a job. So they said, we miss Bend. And so they came back, and I spend my summers here because I like it here.
CS: I went to Summit [High School] my freshman, sophomore years of high school, but my parents have moved around a lot, and so we moved away. I finished school in Kentucky where I grew up.
SW: And then how are you back here in Bend right now?
CS: My parents moved back. They missed Bend, they said it's the only move they made, not for a job. So they said, we miss Bend. And so they came back, and I spend my summers here because I like it here.
SW: What was your interest in interning at the Source Weekly?
CS: I'm super interested in my art accompanying journalism. I think that that's something that I feel emotionally connected to. My mom's a librarian, and I grew up reading a lot, and, you know, we would watch the news every morning. And I think I just think having my art accompany something that feels like it's making an impact is really important to me. And and saying something that's relevant to social and cultural happenings.
Find more of Connley Sewalls' work:
